


Fixed Star

by Summertime_Poet



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: (wrote that with the AOS cast in mind but feel free, (yep), F/M, Growing Up, Guardian Angel AU, I'm sure of it, M/M, Star Trek - Freeform, also i really don't ship Uhura/Spock (at least not in TOS), and she'd be an awesome (and kickass) guardian angel, but feel free to read this with the younger TOS cast in mind as well), but it's canon in AOS and i wanted to include her in the story, guardian angel!mccoy, it was lots of fun to write probably one of the fanfics i enjoyed writing the most, kid!Jim, once i had the idea for this i couldn't stop writing, so here we go, star trek aos - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:19:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3730387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summertime_Poet/pseuds/Summertime_Poet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who says that dying means that you have nothing to do after death?<br/>Leonard McCoy would disagree with you if you told him so. He, now 32-years old and <i>fucking dead</i>, becomes young Jim Kirk's guardian angel.<br/>Not only is his death connected to the little boy's life, but he starts to get further attached to the kid as the years go by.<br/><i>If only he wasn't dead...</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixed Star

**Fixed Star**

It wasn't that he was pissed off the moment he opened his eyes again. Oh, he was _enormously_ pissed off. And he would have let off steam by shouting curses at that idiot whose fault this was weren't he too busy staring at the place he found himself at. He didn't like what he saw. Not at all.

How did he even get here in the first place?! He wondered what made him worthy of ending up in what appeared to be heaven considering all the times he had behaved harshly around others when he was still...

Fuck. He was dead. Fucking _dead_. And all because of that _lousy son of a_...

"Leonard!" His train of thought interrupted, he looked up. Only to blink at a silhouette surrounded by _bright f-_ "Leonard!" - bright light.

He blinked again as the silhouette offered him a hand. He hadn't even noticed that he had been kneeling until now. He hesitated a moment, but then accepted the offer and let the hand, apparently a woman's, pull him up.

Face to face with the stranger and not entirely blinded by the light surrounding her anymore, he could finally make out her face. "I'm Nyota. Welcome to heaven." She smiled at him warmly. 

*

This was how Leonard Horatio McCoy, modest country doctor, became an angel after dying in a car accident at the age of 32. 

It had never been his wish to become an angel, even less would he expect to be chosen for the role of a young boy's guardian angel four to five years later, but there wasn't really anything he could do about this now, right? He was dead after all. This was all he had now.

And he certainly did not want to die again. Definitely not.

He recalled bits and pieces of that night. 

It had been incredibly dark, but he had good eyes, plus he had had his car's headlights on. It had been just another drive home after a late night shift at the hospital.

Until this damn truck had appeared out of nowhere at this one clear crossroads and had hit him sideways, sending his car spinning to the other side of the street, directly into a field where it still turned over a couple of times before McCoy heard an unpleasant noise accompanied with an even more unpleasant feeling and things had turned black. 

*

What McCoy hadn't been able to see was what had happened to the car that had been behind him on the road. It had been a van with three, actually four, people in it. A man, as well as his pregnant wife and her sister in the back seats. They saw the truck speeding across the crossroads - right into McCoy's car - but seconds too late. After the doctor's car had been flung to the other side of the road, George Kirk had only three more seconds of wishful thinking while forcefully stepping onto the brake pedal and screaming 'I love you!' back at his wife- before their car hit the truck, as well.

*

George Kirk and Leonard McCoy died that day. 

That day was also the birthday of young James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk, born on the backseat of his father's crashed car, by his hysterically crying mother and widow of his father.

How could this kid's fate even turn to the better after he already lost one half of his parents that day?

*

Leonard McCoy sighed deeply as he felt that he was requested to appear before the council. That's right. There was no magical voice in his head calling him to do so, but he knew when he was non-verbally given an order. He would have liked to curse but knew he wouldn't be able to do so aloud anyway. These were some of the things that annoyed him the most about his new position as angel. The lack of communication between the angels, as well as this weird knowing that one had no chance but follow the council's orders- and well. The restricted vocabulary that was allowed in heaven. _Gosh dammit._ "Leonard!" Not even in his thoughts he was alone most of the time. 

What he was told when he stood - floated - there before the council made his eyes widen.

*

"So, what you are trying to tell me is that there's a boy, right?" The older angels nodded, waiting for him to continue his retelling of what he had understood from their long rant about destiny and alike. "And he only was born because I happened to have overtaken them a while before we came to that crossroads and... y'know?" Again affirmative nodding. "And his dad's death and- what you are saying is that we were destined to meet, at some point, somehow? Whether both of us were still alive or not?" His disbelief about the last part was clearly audible. 

"See... there are many ways lives can develop. Consider them as... alternative realities. Sudden changes in history, for example in a single person's behavior only, can change everything in their range of influence. And everyone's range of influence they are connected with. It's like a domino chain. Humans do have free will though, they can decide how to act. Just certain points will always stay the same. They are like anchors, fixpoints in time and space. James Kirk is one in your existence, and the same applies the other way round."

"So you are saying that I am the guardian angel of the boy who lived because I died now?"

"So it is."

*

This is how Leonard McCoy, still 32 years old since he didn't age nor became any younger whilst in heaven, became five-year old Jim Kirk's guardian angel.

And oh, did that boy need a guardian angel. Several of them would have been even better.

*

McCoy was doubtful when he first went back to Earth to take a look at that kid. It wasn't his first trip back to Earth- he had checked in on his ex-wife a few times, but upon seeing that his death didn't seem to have had any noticeable effect on her at all, he had stopped his visits. She couldn't see him anyway and he didn't really cling to her and their shared past, so where was the point.

Despite his doubtfulness, however, his interest in young Jim grew from the first day he met him. The kid's dirty blond hair and bright blue eyes radiated a feeling of adventure, of excitement. It was as though nothing could stop this kid from doing what he wanted to do. 

But McCoy's feeling lasted only for a while. Then interest changed into annoyance and utter worry, for example when the boy would climb up the kitchen counter in order to reach a sealed box of his favorite cereal in the cupboard above him. It was more expensive than the normal cereal Winona, his mother, would hand him down from the cupboard every morning, but the thrill of trying to get some of it on his own despite not being allowed to only further encouraged him. The adventurous boy couldn't be stopped by anything. 

Not from climbing the highest three, an old oak tree, in the field nearby their house, nor from jumping down a worryingly high cliff into the ocean during a vacation the small family took when he was nine years old. It was as though he was seeking height.

McCoy had his hands full with saving Jim Kirk's slowly growing ass more than once every week and it wore him out.

He never complained though. He wanted this boy to live.

*

"Jim, Jim- stop it, that tickles! Aaaa-"

Sometimes he really hated his job though.

He absolutely did not think about 17 year old Jim Kirk's naked back as he discretely disappeared again. Hoping the boy wouldn't end up with a bump on his head again like he did the last time when he had accidentally hit it against the bedside lamp.

McCoy really hoped the boy would grow up to a more careful person, but he knew that this was probable as that a camel would ever fit through the eye of a needle. 

*

One night, the kid was nineteen years old by now and still undecided about his future, the angel happened to walk through the boy's bedroom's walls, only to find him hunched over his PADD. Murmuring... the angel's name? McCoy strode over to where Jim was sitting on his bed.

_He was reading up on the accident that had killed his dad- and McCoy!_

_... Did he just caress the picture of the doctor??_

"I'm sorry, Mr. McCoy. Neither you or my dad deserved to die this day..." The boy sighed. "I know only little more about how my father was like than I know about you, but I know that if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be here to-"

Damn that boy. McCoy, touched by his words but also upset about the kid considering his death as a prerequisite for his life, put his hand onto Jim's shoulder. He shouldn't be able to feel the touch, yet the obvious sudden _feeling_ that he felt in his shoulder seemed to startle the blond boy.

He turned off the PADD and lay down on his bed, staring through the part of his ceiling above him that was transparent, and allowed him to gaze at the night sky. He knew little about his dad, but he felt like he knew why the space had always fascinated his father.

*

It took Jim a long time to fall asleep that night and he almost dozed off with his eyes open several times, the light of the stars reflecting in his eyes- yet he kept fighting sleep as long as possible, without knowing why. Deep down he knew the answer already. He had made a decision.

*

His decision had been sudden, so it appeared to everyone but his mother - and McCoy, who had got to know the boy for almost seventeen years by now -, but he received nothing but best wishes for a successful career. People knew that this young man had always been following the ideas he formed in this stubborn head of his, and that if he really wanted something, he would not fail to get it.

*

Three years - and _many_ rescue missions for McCoy - later, 26-years old Jim became captain of Starfleet's flagship, the USS Enterprise.

He almost ran into an open door in his and his roommate Sulu's flat earlier that day, but McCoy, who had spent more time on Earth, next to him, for the past decade than in heaven, had been there to avoid him having to go to the ceremony with a bruise on his head.

*

McCoy wondered what it would be like. To be an angel in space. Then again he didn't mind. He had a job to do. But was it really only the job that made him follow Jim on this flying vessel- him, who despised flying (despite having been an angel for two decades by now) more than anything? 

*

The crew of the Enterprise was on shore leave and it was one of _these_ nights in the life of Jim T. Kirk- so McCoy decided to rest a bit in heaven until the next day. He started contemplating what it was that kept him - besides the council's request two decades ago - supervising Jim's life. That kid was a mess when it came to almost-accidents and he didn't even remember how many times he had already saved his life by now, even less the times he simply would have hurt himself badly hadn't it been for his guardian angel. Only that he did, in fact, remember the amount of times it had been so far. He had started counting them from the day he started taking care of Jim and he didn't plan to stop.

It might appear odd or creepy to others if they knew about him doing so, but for him, it was a consolation. Despite _everything_ , that man survived.

Later the same night, remembering that one night when he had stayed beside Jim's bed, lying on the floor as the other man had lain on his bed, silently joining him gazing at the stars above them, Leonard McCoy had a realization.

*

Jim Kirk was his anchor, his fixpoint- his fixed star.

*

Saving an entire ship, despite the main interest being to save its captain- it was hard. It wore him out. McCoy was glad when he got some support from young guardian angel Pavel Chekov, who had been assigned to take care of Lieutenant Sulu and therefore always tried his best to keep the Enterprise out of trouble when in combat, as well. 

They became friends, eventually, and McCoy learned that the kid had died at age seventeen due to an apparently incurable allergic reaction. McCoy bit his lip when he realized that he might have known how to treat it, hadn't he been dead at this time already.

Instead, he told Chekov about Jim and the things he had experienced with him over the past two decades. "Zounds like you have been friendz with him all hiz life." The younger angel blushed and McCoy lowered his head in what might be read as resignation, which it was to a certain extent, when they both realized how much truth Chekov's words held. And how much it hurt McCoy that only one part of the other angel's statement was wrong. 

*

It took him by surprise when, after _years_ , he felt that someone from the council was calling him again. Chekov reassured him that he would keep an eye on Jim, as well, and McCoy thankfully waved him a goodbye before leaving.

*

When he arrived, there was no council around- only Nyota Uhura. The angel he had first met on the day he had died. They hadn't talked that much ever since, but they trusted each other. After all, she had been the only one who had tried to make him laugh and not look all grumpy during his first few years in heaven by telling him jokes and funny stories she remembered from her life.

"So...?" 

She seemed not to know where to start and he was about to ask again what this all meant, when she blurted out: "I think I found a way to leave heaven!" McCoy stared at her as though she had just told him that the Earth was flat and that instead of water it rained pancakes down there.

*

After a longer conversation and Uhura convincing herself several times they weren't listened to - neither from nearby nor in their minds - McCoy knew that first of all, Uhura was in love with her - by then, third, before she had been assigned to another person for now apparent reason - protégé, and that it was apparently true love that allowed the angels to step in front of the council and request another year alive. If the person the angel was in love with would start to feel the same way, they would be able to stay with them, permanently.

"But... why do you tell me about all of this?" McCoy knitted his brows as he looked at her. Only for seeing her roll her eyes at him. "Leonard, maybe you are too blinded by Jim's self, but trust me, I am not. And I know a man in love when I see him."

*

Thus, soon after, two angels stepped in front of the council, requesting their legitimate right to spend a year alive again, each with the person they had fallen in love with. 

The council seemed to ask only because it was the rule, but didn't seem surprised at all when Leonard McCoy, still 32-years old dead doctor, said more convinced than he had been on his wedding day decades ago and more firmly than assumedly necessary: "Jim... James T. Kirk."

Uhura smiled at him when they started to dematerialize. For some reason, he had a feeling in his guts - and a warmth in his heart as he hadn't felt it that clearly before - that things were going to end up just fine.

*

The two now-former angels landed on Earth, San Francisco to be exact. McCoy would have used his ability to curse again if he hadn't stopped doing so on every single small occasion it seemed fitted over the past years. He also remembered that the crew of the Enterprise would stop by for a shore leave the next day and visibly calmed down.

"... you have yours?" He heard Uhura finishing a question directed at him. "Huh?" She waved a passport and papers at him, and it dawned him what she was talking about. If they were going to stay, at least for now, they would need proper identities and papers. He let out a relieved sigh when he pulled his own papers out of his jacket's pockets and noticed that he had been able to keep his name and profession. His birth date was changed, though. To thirty-two years ago.

*

They had also gotten papers that implied that they had orders to go on board of the Enterprise before she left to her next mission. "I'm glad I attended several seminaries at the academy when Spock still was a cadet over there", Uhura told him. "Languages and communications have always fascinated me, so it makes only sense that they gave me papers saying that I was experienced in this field." McCoy nodded. He had actually spent some of the little time he hadn't been around Jim during his years at the academy attending some lectures on medicine, which had developed quite a lot over the past twenty-somewhat years- per usual.

While walking through San Francisco waiting for the time to board to finally come, the doctor came to wonder something. "How come I never saw you around during the past few years? I might not have crossed path with you in the academy, but I think you would have been there, too, the times Chekov and I had to keep the Enterprise save from total damage, wouldn't you?" Uhura's gaze told him that she would have been there- had she been anywhere close to Spock at that time. 

This was how he learned that Uhura had been assigned another person, a certain Christopher Pike, down on Earth while he had been in space, together with his, Pavel's and her former protégé, chief science officer Spock. Apparently Spock behaved too rationally and logically, plus "he wasn't even human and despite not excluding the existence of angels did not truly believe in them" - Uhura's voice had an angry undertone as she quoted the council, and McCoy swore himself to never piss her off - which ultimately led to the change of her protégés. "The only reassurance that I had were you- and Chekov." Apparently the reason why the young angel's protégé had also been a member of the Enterprise had partially been because Uhura wanted to know Spock and the flagship safe. McCoy raised an eyebrow at that confession, but kept quiet.

* 

There could be said a lot about what happened during the next year that the two former angels spent on the Enterprise, but we will keep it short here.

The day they went on board of the spaceship, Leonard McCoy had to run to treat a stupidly strained hand of the ship's captain. "It's fractured, actually." He searched out some pills that would take the pain Kirk didn't show he was feeling (but McCoy knew him to feel) and gave them to him, along with a glass of water. "This is why you should not "play volleyball" just before boarding, man!" He exclaimed as he treated the darkening bruise forming underneath Jim Kirk's skin, biting his tongue when he realized that maybe, mayyybe, he had been a bit too familiar with his new boss the first time they had actually met in person. But... he could not help it. He was not only his captain now, but McCoy had also known him since he had been a child and he freaking lo-

"Thanks, Bones!" Apparently familiarity with strangers was fine with Jim.

"Bones?" 

"I have a feeling that you'll do a good job at saving us from fractured bones and alike in the future, doc!" With a wink, Jim smoothly stood up and strode toward the door.

"Hey, wait! I'm not all done yet!"

Jim stopped in his movement, sending the older man who had instantly followed him, a medical tool in each hand, crashing against his chest. "Dammit, kid!" 

Had he looked up - hadn't he felt his cheeks turning a light shade of red - he would have seen Jim smirking at him. The other man felt like he would grow fond of the grumpy doctor very soon.

*

As it turned out, he didn't even have to be an angel to save Jim Kirk on an almost daily basis. There were small things, like catching him this one time when he tripped in the cafeteria, a cup of coffee to perk up after a night of little sleep and bad dreams in his hand. McCoy caught him as he was on his way to get a morning coffee himself, only to be rewarded by Jim's hot beverage being spilled on his blue uniform. Jim excused instantly, utterly sorry for his by this time already CMO to have been soaked with hot coffee, when he realized he was still holding on to the other man's sleeves. "Oh god, I'm so sorry Bones!" 

He never said sorry particularly for having clung onto McCoy's shirt longer than necessary- nor would he have meant it.

While the CMO left the cafeteria, slowly feeling the heat of the coffee burn on his chest, Jim rushed towards the replicator and got the cup of morning coffee he knew his friend had come for in the first place- before pursuing him to his quarters and pressing it into the other man's hands. He felt sorry for what had happened but couldn't help but cheekily ask- "Let me help you get off that drenched through shirt?"

McCoy rolled his eyes at first because he knew this flirtatious behavior ever since Jim Kirk had started bringing home boys and girls at the age of sixteen- but then he looked into the other man's eyes and saw that sparkle in them that made them so unique. He knew that the sparkle was not only in his eyes though, it was the entirety of Jim that was a sparkle to him, and upon this renewed realization he only nodded without saying another word. 

*

As they lay chest to chest, Jim on top of Leonard, they both turned their head towards the wide window beside them. The near and far stars' light reflected in both their eyes as they took in the view that they probably took too granted at times, but at other times, like now, had a mesmerizing effect on them. 

From the hallways they heard voices, suddenly stopping. As though- The voices continued, and they both realized that it was clearly ... baffled Spock and urgent and happy Uhura, who were passing by McCoy's quarters. The voices faded quickly as the two seemed to walk down the hallway a bit faster than before, and Jim and McCoy grinned at each other. McCoy was relieved; he dared to hope that both Uhura's and his biggest dreams were coming true now. 

*

"Let me ask you... or- first tell you something, Bones." Jim took a deep breath. McCoy looked at him, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. The younger man laughed a little bit at his expression of confusion, before taking another breath and becoming more serious again. "I didn't... couldn't sleep well tonight, you know?" The CMO nodded at him to continue when he paused after that. "I was thinking about something... someone I read about, some years ago. You have to know, Bones, - if you don't do that already anyway - that my dad died in a car accident almost 27 years ago, on the day I was born." He paused again, only to take a close look at Leonard's expectant face, nodded to himself and continued. "That day... another man died. He was involved in the same accident. He is not to blame for my father's death; he just had even worse luck than him. He was in the car in front of my dad's. He was hit by a truck, sideways, when he passed a crossroads..." McCoy winced.

The two of them stayed silent for the next ten minutes, not sure what to say or how to end this conversation in an appropriate way.

Eventually, McCoy cleared his throat, not all too eager to have this conversation and having flashbacks occupying his mind. But he knew the kid had realized whom he resembled so much- and who he might possibly be.

"Yes", he said, looking up at Jim. "I died that day. Like your father, all help was too late for me." Now the younger man's eyebrows were furrowed in confusion, trying to understand the extent of his realization. "I'm Leonard McCoy, the McCoy who died almost twenty-seven years ago. I-" He stopped, because he did not know how to continue from here on.

"There are things even Spock could not explain with his logic and science would go nuts about, but please trust me here." The other man nodded slowly. His mind seemed to be racing, full with questions, but he only asked him two of them. "Did they- freeze you or so? And revived you when they were able to?" 

The doctor contemplated the effect of telling Jim the truth in comparison to the solution he was offered by Jim's assumption and decided that he liked things how they were, here and now. Jim, despite their weird circumstances at this moment, still pressed close to him, taking in some of his warmer body's heath, not moving away although the sheer craziness of this all would have been an acceptable reason had he decided to do so. He also did not want to lose Jim's trust and friendship by telling him that he had been his almost stalkerish at times guardian angel for almost all his life. Including during some times he probably shouldn't have seen "things" but by accident had seen anyway. If this lie was all it took-

"... yeah. " He swallowed, but upon remembering how much Jim genuinely smiling at him was worth to him continued. "It's a weird thing to tell people, so I try to avoid letting others know, but- an old colleague of mine, back at the hospital I worked at back then, revived me some years ago... It was a stupid thing, a problem with my jammed lungs and some broken bones-" He grinned ironically as he realized that his lie even fitted Jim's nickname for him. "- that they could not fix back then." Jim nodded, although a bit too slow, still proceeding the information he had just been given, until the tenseness in his face and his body seemed to loosen up. If a part of him was still doubting what he had just been told, he probably sensed that this was a topic that neither him nor McCoy wanted to talk about- for both their sake. 

Then he shifted, until his ear rested just above the right side of McCoy's ribcage. After listening to the older man's heart beat for a while he looked up at him again, smiling. "Sounds perfectly fine now!"

McCoy grinned at him and leaned up to plant a short yet firm kiss on the other man's lips. "You're such a dork!" He said it with a wink.

"Love ya too, Bones!", Jim replied and wrapped his arms around McCoy's upper body.

*

Future dangers - as well as explaining to the others why they both were too late for work - were possibly only waiting around the corner for them to have to face them. 

But- here he lay, the fixed star of his life and existence in his arms, lightening up everything around them.

Life couldn't be any better.

 

*** The Beginning ***

**Author's Note:**

> As said in the tags, I wrote this with the AOS characters in mind, which is why I decided to include Spock/Uhura despite not really shipping them (at least not in TOS).  
> I really enjoyed writing this, and I hope you enjoyed reading this fanfic! (Bonus points if you find all the references to the reboot movies c; )
> 
>  
> 
> (I also uploaded this on my dA account, per usual. ^^ )


End file.
